Vice President's Remarks on the War on Terror
American Enterprise Institute
Washington, D.C.

11:01 A.M. EST

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Good morning, and thank you all very much. And
thank you, Chris. It's great to be back at AEI. Both Lynne and I have
a long history with the American Enterprise Institute, and we value the
association, and even more, we value the friendships that have come from
our time here. And I want to thank all of you for coming this morning
and for your welcome.

My remarks today concern national security, in particular the war on
terror and the Iraq front in that war. Several days ago, I commented
briefly on some recent statements that have been made by some members of
Congress about Iraq. Within hours of my speech, a report went out on
the wires under the headline, "Cheney says war critics 'dishonest,'
'reprehensible.'"

One thing I've learned in the last five years is that when you're Vice
President, you're lucky if your speeches get any attention at all. But
I do have a quarrel with that headline, and it's important to make this
point at the outset. I do not believe it is wrong to criticize the war
on terror or any aspect thereof. Disagreement, argument, and debate are
the essence of democracy, and none of us should want it any other way.
For my part, I've spent a career in public service, run for office eight
times -- six statewide offices and twice nationally. I served in the
House of Representatives for better than a decade, most of that time as
a member of the leadership of the minority party. To me, energetic
debate on issues facing our country is more than just a sign of a
healthy political system -- it's also something I enjoy. It's one of
the reasons I've stayed in this business. And I believe the feeling is
probably the same for most of us in public life.

For those of us who don't mind debating, there's plenty to keep us busy
these days, and it's not likely to change any time soon. On the
question of national security, feelings run especially strong, and there
are deeply held differences of opinion on how best to protect the United
States and our friends against the dangers of our time. Recently my
friend and former colleague Jack Murtha called for a complete withdrawal
of American forces now serving in Iraq, with a drawdown to begin at
once. I disagree with Jack and believe his proposal would not serve the
best interests of this nation. But he's a good man, a Marine, a patriot
-- and he's taking a clear stand in an entirely legitimate discussion.

Nor is there any problem with debating whether the United States and our
allies should have liberated Iraq in the first place. Here, as well,
the differing views are very passionately and forcefully stated. But
nobody is saying we should not be having this discussion, or that you
cannot reexamine a decision made by the President and the Congress some
years ago. To the contrary, I believe it is critical that we continue
to remind ourselves why this nation took action, and why Iraq is the
central front in the war on terror, and why we have a duty to persevere.

What is not legitimate -- and what I will again say is dishonest and
reprehensible -- is the suggestion by some U. S. senators that the
President of the United States or any member of his administration
purposely misled the American people on pre-war intelligence.

Some of the most irresponsible comments have come from politicians who
actually voted in favor of authorizing the use of force against Saddam
Hussein. These are elected officials who had access to the intelligence
materials. They are known to have a high opinion of their own
analytical capabilities. (Laughter.) And they were free to reach their
own judgments based upon the evidence. They concluded, as the President
and I had concluded, and as the previous administration had concluded,
that Saddam Hussein was a threat. Available intelligence indicated that
the dictator of Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and this judgment
was shared by the intelligence agencies of many other nations, according
to the bipartisan Silberman-Robb Commission. All of us understood, as
well, that for more than a decade, the U.N. Security Council had
demanded that Saddam Hussein make a full accounting of his weapons
programs. The burden of proof was entirely on the dictator of Iraq --
not on the U.N. or the United States or anyone else. And he repeatedly
refused to comply throughout the course of the decade.

Permit me to burden you with a bit more history: In August of 1998, the
U.S. Congress passed a resolution urging President Clinton take
"appropriate action" to compel Saddam to come into compliance with his
obligations to the Security Council. Not a single senator voted no.
Two months later, in October of '98 -- again, without a single
dissenting vote in the United States Senate -- the Congress passed the
Iraq Liberation Act. It explicitly adopted as American policy
supporting efforts to remove Saddam Hussein's regime from power and
promoting an Iraqi democracy in its place. And just two months after
signing the Iraq Liberation law, President Clinton ordered that Iraq be
bombed in an effort to destroy facilities that he believed were
connected to Saddam's weapons of mass destruction programs.

By the time Congress voted to authorize force in late 2002, there was
broad-based, bipartisan agreement that the time had come to enforce the
legitimate demands of the international community. And our thinking was
informed by what had happened to our country on the morning of September
11th, 2001. As the prime target of terrorists who have shown an ability
to hit America and who wish to do so in spectacular fashion, we have a
responsibility to do everything we can to keep terrible weapons out of
the hands of these enemies. And we must hold to account regimes that
could supply those weapons to terrorists in defiance of the civilized
world. As the President has said, "Terrorists and terror states do not
reveal ... threats with fair notice, in formal declarations -- and
responding to such enemies only after they have struck first is not
self-defense, it is suicide."

In a post-9/11 world, the President and Congress of the United States
declined to trust the word of a dictator who had a history of weapons of
mass destruction programs, who actually used weapons of mass destruction
against innocent civilians in his own country, who tried to assassinate
a former President of the United States, who was routinely shooting at
allied pilots trying to enforce no fly zones, who had excluded weapons
inspectors, who had defied the demands of the international community,
whose regime had been designated an official state sponsor of terror,
and who had committed mass murder. Those are the facts.

Although our coalition has not found WMD stockpiles in Iraq, I repeat
that we never had the burden of proof; Saddam Hussein did. We operated
on the best available intelligence, gathered over a period of years from
within a totalitarian society ruled by fear and secret police. We also
had the experience of the first Gulf War -- when the intelligence
community had seriously underestimated the extent and progress Saddam
had made toward developing nuclear weapons.

Finally, according to the Duelfer report, Saddam Hussein wanted to
preserve the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction
when sanctions were lifted. And we now know that the sanctions regime
had lost its effectiveness and been totally undermined by Saddam
Hussein's successful effort to corrupt the Oil for Food program.

The flaws in the intelligence are plain enough in hindsight, but any
suggestion that prewar information was distorted, hyped, or fabricated
by the leader of the nation is utterly false. Senator John McCain put
it best: "It is a lie to say that the President lied to the American
people."

American soldiers and Marines serving in Iraq go out every day into some
of the most dangerous and unpredictable conditions. Meanwhile, back in
the United States, a few politicians are suggesting these brave
Americans were sent into battle for a deliberate falsehood. This is
revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety. It has no place
anywhere in American politics, much less in the United States Senate.

One might also argue that untruthful charges against the
Commander-in-Chief have an insidious effect on the war effort itself.
I'm unwilling to say that, only because I know the character of the
United States Armed Forces -- men and women who are fighting the war on
terror in Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other fronts. They haven't
wavered in the slightest, and their conduct should make all Americans
proud. They are absolutely relentless in their duties, and they are
carrying out their missions with all the skill and the honor we expect
of them. I think of the ones who put on heavy gear and work 12-hour
shifts in the desert heat. Every day they are striking the enemy --
conducting raids, training up Iraqi forces, countering attacks, seizing
weapons, and capturing killers. Americans appreciate our fellow
citizens who go out on long deployments and endure the hardship of
separation from home and family. We care about those who have returned
with injuries, and who face the long, hard road of recovery. And our
nation grieves for the men and women whose lives have ended in freedom's
cause.

The people who serve in uniform, and their families, can be certain:
that their cause is right and just and necessary, and we will stand
behind them with pride and without wavering until the day of victory.

The men and women on duty in this war are serving the highest ideals of
this nation -- our belief in freedom and justice, equality, and the
dignity of the individual. And they are serving the vital security
interests of the United States. There is no denying that the work is
difficult and there is much yet to do. Yet we can harbor no illusions
about the nature of this enemy, or the ambitions it seeks to achieve.

In the war on terror we face a loose network of committed fanatics,
found in many countries, operating under different commanders. Yet the
branches of this network share the same basic ideology and the same dark
vision for the world. The terrorists want to end American and Western
influence in the Middle East. Their goal in that region is to gain
control of the country, so they have a base from which to launch attacks
and to wage war against governments that do not meet their demands. For
a time, the terrorists had such a base in Afghanistan, under the
backward and violent rule of the Taliban. And the terrorists hope to
overturn Iraq's democratic government and return that country to the
rule of tyrants. The terrorists believe that by controlling an entire
country, they will be able to target and overthrow other governments in
the region, and to establish a radical Islamic empire that encompasses a
region from Spain, across North Africa, through the Middle East and
South Asia, all the way to Indonesia. They have made clear, as well,
their ultimate ambitions: to arm themselves with weapons of mass
destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate all Western countries, and
to cause mass death in the United States.

Some have suggested that by liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein, we
simply stirred up a hornet's nest. They overlook a fundamental fact:
We were not in Iraq on September 11th, 2001 -- and the terrorists hit us
anyway. The reality is that terrorists were at war with our country
long before the liberation of Iraq, and long before the attacks of 9/11.
And for many years, they were the ones on the offensive. They grew
bolder in the belief that if they killed Americans, they could change
American policy. In Beirut in 1983, terrorists killed 241 of our
service men. Thereafter, the United States withdrew from Beirut. In
Mogadishu in 1993, terrorists killed 19 American soldiers. Thereafter,
the U.S. withdrew its forces from Somalia. Over time, the terrorists
concluded that they could strike America without paying a price, because
they did, repeatedly: the bombing at the World Trade Center in 1993,
the murders at the Saudi National Guard Training Center in Riyadh in
1995, the Khobar Towers in 1996, the simultaneous bombings of American
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and, of course, the bombing of
the USS Cole in 2000.

Believing they could strike us with impunity and that they could change
U.S. policy, they attacked us on 9/11 here in the homeland, killing
3,000 people. Now they are making a stand in Iraq -- testing our
resolve, trying to intimidate the United States into abandoning our
friends and permitting the overthrow of this new Middle Eastern
democracy. Recently we obtained a message from the number-two man in al
Qaeda, Mr. Zawahiri, that he sent to his chief deputy in Iraq, the
terrorist Zarqawi. The letter makes clear that Iraq is part of a larger
plan of imposing Islamic radicalism across the broader Middle East --
making Iraq a terrorist haven and a staging ground for attacks against
other nations. Zawahiri also expresses the view that America can be
made to run again.

In light of the commitments our country has made, and given the stated
intentions of the enemy, those who advocate a sudden withdrawal from
Iraq should answer a few simple questions: Would the United States and
other free nations be better off, or worse off, with Zarqawi, bin Laden,
and Zawahiri in control of Iraq? Would we be safer, or less safe, with
Iraq ruled by men intent on the destruction of our country?

It is a dangerous illusion to suppose that another retreat by the
civilized world would satisfy the appetite of the terrorists and get
them to leave us alone. In fact such a retreat would convince the
terrorists that free nations will change our policies, forsake our
friends, abandon our interests whenever we are confronted with murder
and blackmail. A precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would be a victory
for the terrorists, an invitation to further violence against free
nations, and a terrible blow to the future security of the United States
of America.

So much self-defeating pessimism about Iraq comes at a time of real
progress in that country. Coalition forces are making decisive strikes
against terrorist strongholds, and more and more they are doing so with
Iraqi forces at their side. There are more than 90 Iraqi army
battalions fighting the terrorists, along with our forces. On the
political side, every benchmark has been met successfully -- starting
with the turnover of sovereignty more than a year ago, the national
elections last January, the drafting of the constitution and its
ratification by voters just last month, and, a few weeks from now, the
election of a new government under that new constitution.

The political leaders of Iraq are steady and courageous, and the
citizens, police and soldiers of that country have proudly stepped
forward as active participants and guardians in a new democracy --
running for office, speaking out, voting and sacrificing for their
country. Iraqi citizens are doing all of this despite threats from
terrorists who offer no political agenda for Iraq's future, and wage a
campaign of mass slaughter against the Iraqi people themselves -- the
vast majority of whom are fellow Arabs and fellow Muslims.

Day after day, Iraqis are proving their determination to live in
freedom, to chart their own destiny, and to defend their own country.
And they can know that the United States will keep our commitment to
them. We will continue the work of reconstruction. Our forces will
keep going after the terrorists, and continue training the Iraqi
military, so that Iraqis can eventually take the lead in their country's
security and our men and women can come home. We will succeed in this
mission, and when it is concluded, we will be a safer nation.

Wartime conditions are, in every case, a test of military skill and
national resolve. But this is especially true in the war on terror.
Four years ago, President Bush told Congress and the country that the
path ahead would be difficult, that we were heading into a long
struggle, unlike any we have known. All this has come to pass. We have
faced, and are facing today, enemies who hate us, hate our country, and
hate the liberties for which we stand. They dwell in the shadows, wear
no uniform, have no regard for the laws of warfare, and feel
unconstrained by any standard of morality. We've never had a fight like
this, and the Americans who go into the fight are among the bravest
citizens this nation has ever produced. All who have labored in this
cause can be proud of their service for the rest of their lives.

The terrorists lack any capacity to inspire the hearts of good men and
women. And their only chance for victory is for us to walk away from
the fight. They have contempt for our values, they doubt our strength,
and they believe that America will lose our nerve and let down our
guard. But this nation has made a decision: We will not retreat in the
face of brutality, and we will never live at the mercy of tyrants or
terrorists.

None of us can know every turn that lies ahead for America in the fight
against terror. And because we are Americans, we are going to keep
discussing the conduct and the progress of this war and having debates
about strategy. Yet the direction of events is plain to see, and this
period of struggle and testing should also be seen as a time of promise.
The United States of America is a good country, a decent country, and we
are making the world a better place by defending the innocent,
confronting the violent, and bringing freedom to the oppressed. We
understand the continuing dangers to civilization, and we have the
resources, the strength, and the moral courage to overcome those dangers
and lay the foundations for a better world.